


Vespertine

by feralphoenix



Category: Yggdra Union
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/F, Illustrated, M/M, violence kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her brother is a matchstick boy with rapidly degrading mental endurance and a dwindling list of places to take shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vespertine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiniNephthys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniNephthys/gifts).



> _(The ashes of what you once were_ – you’d like to plant flowers at the juncture of his neck and shoulder and set stars into every vertebrae of his [spine](http://rrevolutionaries.tumblr.com/post/53699751326/xxviii))

For a while the only sounds are the running faucet, the steady movement of the old grandfather clock, and the scrape of graphite on paper. Emilia leans in to blow away remaining bits of eraser dust. She’s keeping color tests on a separate page, lazier haphazard sketches in rows. She likes the feeling of pencil against paper, likes blending colored pencils, but comparing color schemes is so much easier digitally.

Her heart isn’t really in the design work anyway, even though the project was due last week, even though she’s only gotten an extension on the assignment because of the circumstances. She stares down at the drawing, and picks up a colored pencil at random. One of the sketches is filled up with mauve polka dots. Pattern prints are best used sparingly, and she may have used up her pattern budget last month with all that paisley, but there is only so wrong that one can go with polka dots.

Across the room, Nessiah turns the faucet off. Emilia looks up and watches him drift through the kitchen, wet fingertips skimming the countertops until he locates the spice rack. He traces the shakers with his middle and ring fingers, feeling for the Braille labels underneath the usual lettering. The motions are a bit clumsier than usual: He probably can’t feel the bumps through the band-aid on his index fingertip.

Emilia remembers the intense beauty of the deep red of blood beading on Nessiah’s white skin like tiny roses blooming, and the way he had calmly slipped the entire finger into his mouth to suck the blood off. She feels exactly the same brief pang of arousal, deep, wet, at the recalled imagery. It’s what Elena would call _morbid,_ but Emilia thinks of it as funny and kind of weird, between Nessiah’s relationship with her brother and that he isn’t even her type, not really. It’s the unthinking artistry that gets to her: It would otherwise be out of place.

She casts about for redder pencils, wanting to work that spot color into the design: Maybe a dye stain, amorphous. Obviously against white, or it would lose the eroticism. She gets a new sheet of copied sketches and tries a splotch over the heart, then over the stomach.

The outfit is half modern ouji-kei and half 1920s garçonne; cute and blunt. It is easier to design clothing when she has a person in mind for it—classical men’s fashion, long coattails and waistcoats and bolero jackets, as if for her brother; free assignments, checkerboard patterns or houndstooth accents on soft, gauzy fairy fabrics for Nessiah—this assignment calls for an all-seasons wardrobe for women. Emilia thinks of Elena for each design, and so inevitably she codes in a powerful, private kind of sexuality: She wants to see Elena in clothes that she herself has made. She wants to take Elena out of the same clothes, piece by piece, like unwrapping a present.

She distracts herself for a while with fantasies—decides to go with the stomach slash, relocates the polka dots idea to the inner side of the fabric (ivory on charcoal, to keep from detracting attention from the allusion to blood). She bends her mind to the work, a steady rhythm of pencils to paper, rubbing the white pencil off on the color test sheet to keep unnecessary colors from mixing in while using it for blending.

But it is still a distraction, and she finishes coloring and looks up at the clock and there are still twenty minutes left. At least he will be here on time. The doctors are very punctual, and they have arranged him to be sent by chauffeur.

It occurs to Emilia to ask Nessiah to use his power to check on things, but she keeps silent, annoyed with herself and a bit guilty. No matter how quickly he rebounds, he’s already drained near-dry: His vision is almost gone, colors down to a muddy blur, vague monochrome outlines all that remain. It’s been a while since he’s worn himself down to the point of needing the Braille. One more push, and it might have been Emilia having to make dinner tonight.

The plates are already laid out on the table: apples with skin half-peeled into shapes like little animals, shiny peaches with chocolate sauce traced over them in geometric patterns, strawberries dusted in roughly-cut sugar. Nessiah dries his hands on a washcloth and leaves it aimlessly on the counter, patting his skirt as if discomfited by the traces of dampness that must still remain in the cracks of his skin.

Emilia wonders what he does when he burns himself out completely—if he knows the flat well enough to maneuver without sight, or if he neglects his physical needs whenever anything is too hard to do since it will return anyway. She can’t really put the latter past him.

She asks: “Are you sure we can do this?”

Nessiah shakes his head slightly and pulls his hair back, tucking it behind his ears. “We will have to. If only for your brother’s sake, this can’t go on.”

“Yeah.” This is, she reminds herself, not the first curse Nessiah has broken.

Like punctuation, the doorbell rings, and they rush to answer it at the same time.

When Emilia opens the door and light falls over Gulcasa standing just outside it, he doesn’t meet her gaze or Nessiah’s. His eyes are downcast, and he seems spacey, a little, reserved and hesitant when he might not ordinarily be.

  


Looking at his hair is still horrible. They trimmed it down a bit at the hospital, but it’s still choppy and uneven: Emilia cannot ever remember her brother wearing his hair shorter than his waist, and here it is dancing around his shoulders, getting caught on the hood of the dark coat he clutches around himself, over the thin hospital clothes. There are thin scabs, dark broken slashes of burgundy, on the sides of his face from times that he missed. Emilia half expects him to still be smudged with ash, but so much time has passed since he was admitted to treat the smoke inhalation. It is painful to look at him, but she doesn’t want to do him the disservice of looking away. This isn’t his fault.

“Food’s ready,” she says, and makes herself smile. “Come on, I’m sure it’s gonna be better to eat than the crap the doctors have been feeding you.”

Gulcasa narrows his eyes, and for a moment makes as if to say something. He never does. She has never seen him look so defeated.

“Stop being stupid and get inside,” Nessiah says, brisk and a bit cross. “I can’t bloody see you out there, I need brighter lights to get proper contrast.”

They reach out and take his hands, one to each, and he follows them into the flat. The door closes behind them, like a legal sentence, like a gunshot to signal the race beginning.


End file.
